Secret Becomes Third Team to Withdraw From Nanyang Championship

The Nanyang Championship (NYC) is one of the SEA’s biggest DOTA 2 tournaments, where top teams from all over the world come and compete at Shanghai. As the qualifiers for season 2 approach a conclusion, three of the directly invited teams have already withdrawn from the tournament.

Originally, Fnatic was the first one to withdraw from the tournament due to visa issues with Djardel “DJ” Mampusti, one of their players. DJ only has one blank page in his passport, and China’s visa requires two. Fnatic may participate in other upcoming tournaments though as they all have American visas.

Evil Geniuses faced a similar issue when their mid laner, Sumail’s visa application was rejected 3 times. Due to this, they had no other option but to back out from the tournament. The organizers confirmed that the top tier team will not be able to attend the event.

To clarify, Sumail's visa was rejected because we were never provided a government approved invitation from Nanyang. Never an issue before.

Finally, Team Secret turned out to have voluntarily withdrawn from the tournament as well. This makes them the third directly invited team to give up their spot, out of four. Their motive for not participating in the Nanyang Championship season 2 is likely because they want to avoid LANs and prepare for the International 2016. With the yearly Valve championship coming closer day by day, they need to prepare strategies and build team coordination instead of travelling around the world and competing in LANs. After all, the massive crowdfunded prize pool of $16+ million is way more tempting than what the Nanyang Championship has to offer.

Nanyang Championship Season 2 will kick off in Shanghai on June 6th. The talent team for the tournament is exceptional, with KOTLGuy as the host. Also, the event features some rising stars in new teams as well. The competing teams are:

Newbee

LGD

Wings Gaming

Team Empire

Digital Chaos

WarriorsGaming.Unity

The remaining two slots for the American and European directly invited teams are to be decided.